


frozen flowers

by venndaai



Category: Star Wars Legends: The Old Republic (Video Game)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Hanahaki Disease, M/M, POV First Person Plural, Terminal Illnesses
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-15
Updated: 2021-02-15
Packaged: 2021-03-16 15:41:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,657
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29456154
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/venndaai/pseuds/venndaai
Summary: In his 'retirement' in the mountains of Alderaan, Dr. Eckard Lokin searches for a cure to his deteriorating condition. Vector struggles with a different ailment.
Relationships: Vector Hyllus/Eckard Lokin
Comments: 4
Kudos: 3
Collections: Chocolate Box - Round 6





	frozen flowers

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Ekevka](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ekevka/gifts).



We stand on a mountainside, cold wind in our hair, looking out across a white, shining world. Winter on Alderaan turns the Juran Mountains into a glittering snowglobe. On the other side of the peaks, Oroboro Nest slumbers. Amongst snow and rocks, we crouch and vomit a bloody mass of wildflowers, species that will not bloom here for months yet. The blood freezes, icing over the blue and white and pink petals. 

The house nestles into the mountains, hidden from view and guarded by the tame rakghouls. We have often wondered what the virus would make of us, but there is no worry of finding out soon; Lokin has trained them to recognize our scent as well as his. To them we are part of their pack, family, safety. It is a little like having a nest. Not enough to help with the empty ache in our chest, but enough to make flowers bloom in our throat when we walk through the meadow. The rakghouls seem to appreciate the shelter we built for them, though Lokin argued it was unnecessary. 

The house itself is small, enclosed, self-sufficient. As the door slides closed behind us we are once again enfolded in warmth and familiarity. We have called many places home in our lives. A large sunny house on Jurio; a dark and wet and beautiful cave, deep in the mountains; a small spacecraft and the echoing of voices, metal sealing out the void. And now this place. 

When we enter, Lokin is seated at his desk, working with the electroporator, but at the sound of the door, the brief interlude of wind and snow before it closed again, he looks up, and then stands and comes towards us. “You look chilled to the bone,” he says, taking us by the elbows. “Sit down.” 

“Only if you join us, Doctor,” we say. “Please don’t strain yourself on our account.” He looks energetic enough, but his aura is crackling with static. In these last few months, he’s lost weight he can’t afford and what remained of his hair has mostly gone. He flits rapidly to the kitchen and back, bringing us a warm drink, a display of energy, but he still seems so small and fragile; more so since he banned himself from transforming, to save his systems the stress of it. 

“How is your work?” we ask.

“I made several breakthroughs today, I think,” he says with a smile. We only look at him, and he sighs.

“There was a time when you were very easy to fool, my dear,” he says. “So innocent to the ways of liars like myself. I found it charming, if a little terrifying.” 

“We know you better now,” we say. 

“Of course,” he says, and his smile doesn’t change, but his aura sparks with a dark color of storms. He sighs. “Very well. I’ve gone as far as I can with the samples you procured. None of the strains have successfully overcome the immune response. Lorrick’s original strain may be my only chance.” 

“Do you know where it could be found?”

“I’ve been listening to THORNE’s broadcasts- admirable of them to be continuing their efforts even amidst galactic war. Tatooine seems to be the site of the latest resurgence.” He looks at us. “I hate to ask, but perhaps one of your Joiners-?”

Now it’s our turn to look away. “That won’t be possible,” we say, the words bitter on our tongue. “We’re sorry.” 

“Hm,” Lokin says. “Drink your tea.” We obey. “Why not?”

“We are-” It is more difficult than we expected, to say it. To admit it; to admit to our failure. We have done nothing but fail, in recent years. “We are… perhaps estranged would be the best word. Estranged from the Nest.”

He waits, listening patiently, calmly. 

“Hanahaki is not an ailment known to the Kind,” we say at last. We look at him, briefly. His aura has shifted, into the warm red we associate with his kindness.

“That isn’t surprising,” he says, to fill the silence. “After all, it is a disease borne from loneliness. From an unbridgeable distance between two isolated minds. You’ve often spoken of the communion of the Nest as its most attractive benefit.” 

“Precisely,” we say. “There have been times when a Joiner has come to us already infected, but the flowers always wither after they have become part of us. Never before has one already joined contracted the disease. The others, they do not know how to… how to process my… my suffering, I suppose. It is a source of discomfort and fear, in a time when the Nest already grieves many losses, and so they have reduced our connection.” 

“I am sorry to hear that,” he says, and then after a hesitant moment, he leans forward, and hand comes to rest on our shoulder. 

At his touch the flowers burst into unfurled choking verdance in our lungs. It’s rude of us, but we pull away from him and stagger into the kitchen, to cough and cough, bloody petals catching on our teeth. 

He comes into the kitchen in time to catch us when we fall. He is sick, but the serum still gives him strength beyond ordinary human ability, and so we do not crash to the floor but sway in an awkward embrace. We collapse together onto the couch. We are shivering. Almost absent-mindedly, as though the gesture means nothing, he puts an arm around our shoulders. 

“I take it you remain uninterested in surgical solutions,” he says. 

“Yes,” we say, voice hoarse. 

“Well,” he says, “I am not ready to admit defeat. Since I’ve run into this wall on one research topic, it seems a good time to return to the other. Your body’s alien defense systems are highly impressive at dealing with other invasions. I still believe it should be possible to direct them against this one.”

“No,” we say. “You don’t have time to spend on this. We will go to Tatooine, by ourselves, and we will get you the necessary samples.”

“There is a limit to palliative care,” he says, and even we can hear the uncharacteristic sharpness in his voice now. “If you don’t address this it will kill you.” 

Provoked, distressed, in pain, we say, “It is your death that is killing us.”

Silence.

“I’m sorry?” he says, faintly. His hand has frozen on our shoulder. 

“Every day we see you suffer the garden inside us whispers of the peace of the earth, and when you are gone there will be no reason not to listen,” we say. There is an anger in our words, inside us, that disturbs us. “If you were well we could carry the growth of our feelings peacefully inside our body but without the Song and without you there is nothing but winter without hope of spring.” 

His grip on our shoulder tightens, almost painfully. “I thought the agent was the source of your unreciprocated feelings,” he says slowly. 

“We grieve them,” we say honestly. “But was it the agent who befriended us when we were considered a monster by so many? Who took us to the Kaas City opera and showed us human music to rival the song of the Nest? Who helped us find answers on our own creation, and listened to us speak of our beginnings and our hopes for the future? Who stayed with us when the agent was lost and our companionship broken?”

“Ah,” Lokin says, after a while, so quietly an ordinary human might not have heard the sound.

We still do not look at him. “We don’t ask for you to return our feelings,” we say. “Only that you live.”

“Vector,” he says. “Would you do me the kindness of looking at me?”

His fingers touch our cheek with devastating gentleness. We allow him to turn our face towards his, like one of the flowers in our lungs, seeking the winter sun. 

“I’ve survived a very long time in a very dangerous line of work,” he says, “by becoming very good at not wanting things I can’t have. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

“No,” we whisper. 

“It’s very rare,” he says, “for me to discover that I’ve been mistaken. That one of the things I never permitted myself to want was right in front of my eyes, if only I’d been wise enough to see it.” His hand strokes our cheek, tucks a strand of hair behind our ear. 

“I’ve killed many more than I’ve cured, over my lifetime,” he says. “But I am still a doctor. And there are still few things that give me more pleasure than the feeling of power that comes from curing a patient.” He leans forward, closing the distance between us. “You are loved, Vector Hyllus, Dawn Herald of the Oroboro Nest,” he murmurs. “Breathe freely. Do your best to live, and I will do the same.” 

We pull him into our arms, and for the first time in months, we hear the Song of the Universe around us in beautiful harmonious clarity.

Mornings in the Juran Mountains are very cold, particularly in winter, and it is difficult to rise, particularly with a warm body in our arms. But when we feel the tickle in our throat, we extricate ourselves and rise from Lokin’s wide bed. Under ordinary circumstances, he’d be awake by now, his enhanced senses on constant alert, but the cancer treatments leave him drowsy and sluggish, and we do not worry too much about waking him as we descend into the kitchen. The coughing is familiar, but what we cough up is not: full plants, blossom and stem and root bulb, the brown tendrils slick and bloody but whole, their grip on our lungs released. 

It is only hours later that the rakghoul sentries cry out, alerted by an old friend, long lost, appearing on our doorstep, bringing hope for a new future.


End file.
